The cost of staging an Edinburgh fringe show: artists open their account books

The cost of staging an Edinburgh fringe show: artists open their account books

By the end of last year’s festival, one company had made £160 each from their ‘hit show’. But even if there’s no profit from the box office, the other benefits of appearing at Edinburgh are incalculable

Danny Braverman won’t be at the Edinburgh festival fringe this year. That’s because he is performing his one man show Wot? No Fish!!, a brilliantly affecting piece about his great aunt and uncle’s marriage, for a run at London’s Southbank Centre. But if Braverman hadn’t taken Wot? No Fish!! to Edinburgh in 2013, he wouldn’t be at the Southbank at all. Neither would he have taken the show to Australia, the US and Luxembourg – as well as all over the UK. It was the Edinburgh fringe that gave the show further and sustainable life.

“Wot? No Fish!! definitely hasn’t made me a millionaire, but its success means that I don’t have to keep going back to raise money and get grants to support it to tour. Instead it pays me. Not a fortune: I get about what I’d expect to get paid for a day’s lecturing,” says Braverman, who, when he took the show to Edinburgh, budgeted on three possible scenarios: heaven, hell and earth.

“People are much too financially optimistic in Edinburgh, which is why they get burned. On the fringe you have to assume the hell scenario. In our case that would have meant losing between £10,000 and £15,000. We were being realistic, and were fully prepared for the worst happening.” It didn’t, but that was certainly as much down to good planning as luck.

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With years of experience in the business behind him and good contacts, Braverman knew how to maximise the show’s chances. In January 2013, before making the final decision to go, he and director Nick Phillipou secured a performance at Rich Mix in London and invited as many contacts as they could.

“They corroborated what we already thought, that the show had legs and that with the right platform it could do well. It’s life-affirming and it isn’t a Marmite show; it’s very hard to dislike. We thought if we could get the right venue it could be a success, and we were helped because people were already tweeting about it, and generating interest, so getting a slot at Summerhall, which is curated and where we felt the work sat best and could perhaps benefit from being on the coat-tail of other quality shows, wasn’t difficult. Then we did a crowd-funder that raised £5,500, but more importantly built expectation. You have to see crowdfunding as part of your marketing, not just a way of raising money.” They also hired a PR, which helped to generate reviews and interest from programmers.

Act two … Barrel Organ return to Edinburgh this year with Some People Talk About Violence. Photograph: Richard Davenport

Wot? No Fish!! is one of the Edinburgh fringe’s success stories. And there are plenty of them, on vastly differing scales, from the international hit Black Watch, which has toured the world, to Nothing, a show by Warwick University’s graduate company Barrel Organ. They came to Edinburgh with a 10am slot in Summerhall, hastily arranged at the last minute, for the show which was well-received National Student Drama festival. No, they didn’t go away in any position to give up the day jobs, nor was a world tour arranged, but they did start the kinds of conversations with venues and programmers which are so vital. This year they will be back at Summerhall with Some People Talk About Violence.

On the fringe, even if a show sells out it doesn’t mean that money is being made. But it can make reputations. Theatre/illustration company 1927, this year part of the International festival, collaborating with Barrie Kosky on The Magic Flute, made their name eight years ago on the fringe with Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and old timers such as Grid Iron (back this year with Light Boxes at Summerhall) and newcomers such as Analogue and Curious Directive, are just a few of the companies who first came to attention on the fringe and went on to forge careers.

For three weeks of the year, Edinburgh is where the UK theatre industry can be found en masse, those hard-to-arrange meetings magically materialise, and shows that nobody has had the time to see (despite repeated invites) suddenly attract programmers. Even with the high costs of accommodation during August, it’s time- and cost-efficient for theatres, producers and programmers because of the sheer number of shows to see. In an era when money for commissioning and making shows is tight, Edinburgh’s readymade products are increasingly programmed by many venues.

Choosing to come only in British Council showcase years, when there are increased numbers of promoters in town, is what canny companies such as Dumbshow do to try and increase their chances. They’re here this year at the Pleasance with Electric Dreams, inspired by Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.

Scaled back and directed … Dumbshow are staging only one show, Electric Dreams, this year. Photograph: Camilla Greenwell

“We’ve never had a really awful time financially,” says Dumbshow’s Mike Bryher. “The worst was 2011, when we overstretched ourselves and brought three shows and lost £3,000. But Edinburgh works for us. We always flier and enjoy meeting the audience, and without Edinburgh we just wouldn’t be able to tour. We plan work in two-year cycles to coincide with Edinburgh.” This year’s show is a potential game-changer for them, with a budget of £55,000, of which £47,000 is funded by the Wellcome Trust, Arts Council England (for touring) and Warwick University.

“The show budget hasn’t really changed,” says Bryher, “the difference the funding makes is that it means everyone will get paid for rehearsing and performing.”

That’s still a rarity on the Edinburgh fringe, where most shows are budgeted on all the artists giving their time and labour for free. In some cases, performers will also pay for travel and their own accommodation. The economics simply don’t stack up without the willingness of thousands of performers and theatre-makers to self-exploit. That’s why it’s important that companies do open-book accounting, so that the economics of a production are transparent and everyone can see where the money is going.

Dug Out Theatre hope to repeat the rare feat of making enough money to pay their actors, with The Sunset Five this year. Photograph: Public domain

That’s what Dug Out Theatre do. Dug Out are hoping to fill the 175-seater Pleasance Dome with The Sunset Five, about a quiz team who stage a casino heist to save their beloved local pub. Dug Out came to Bedlam in 2012 as a graduate company, with Inheritance Blues: it was a big success and came back to the Pleasance last year. The show was a hit, taking £18,948 gross, of which the company’s share was £10,389. With costs of £6,800, that left enough to invest a small amount back into the company and pay £160 to everyone involved in the show. So, was it worth all the effort for £160 each? Maybe not financially, but certainly for the contacts made with Hull Truck and West Yorkshire Playhouse, who have both supported the company over the last year.

“We owe a lot to what has happened to the company during the last year to that month in Edinburgh in the summer of 2014,” says Dug Out’s George Chilcott.

But the margins for error are often very narrow. Arsalan Sattari is a young producer taking Girl from Nowhere to the Pleasance. On opening night, he will have spent £4,600. But he will need to sell 90% of seats to end up with a profit of £2,122. If he only sells 35% of his seats, he will be in the red by £1,970. But of course in Edinburgh discounting and two-for-one deals are widespread, so achieving the £10.50 average ticket price on which the budget is based could be tricky. But Sattari is confident that his significant spend on marketing and press – just over £3,000 – will pay off and that he is managing the risk. When I speak to him just before the festival starts, he’s delighted to have found an additional saving of £1,000, by dispensing with part of the set.

Counting on discounts … Girl from Nowhere, written and performed by Victoria Rigby. Photograph: Thurstan Redding

Edinburgh is all about loss leaders, even for really experienced producers who know they will lose on the Edinburgh run, but make it up on touring gigs. It is why the question companies ask themselves is not whether they can afford to go to the Edinburgh fringe, but whether they can afford not to, despite the rising costs and financial risks. Yes, there are some of those in Edinburgh every year, but there are also plenty of people like Kate Goodfellow, who last year arrived at the fringe with stars in her eyes and, fortunately, enough friends who had already been there to give her a realistic steer.

“The experience didn’t break my spirit, but it did break the bank,” says Goodfellow wryly. Her one-woman show, Smoking Ban, at Space Venues last year, cost her £7,581.43p to produce (she is very keen that I don’t forget the 43p). With a smallest audience of 27 people, she still only made box office of £1,800, which would have been a financial disaster if she hadn’t raised £6,342 on a crowd-funding campaign. Even so, she says that returning home with only £70 in her pocket and the rent due was hard. But she’d had an inspiring month, saw lots of work and met people who became her collaborators.

Kate Goodfellow, performing here as a stool, has seen her costs double this year to stage Tumbling After. Photograph: Public domain

Undaunted, this year Goodfellow is taking a new show, Tumbling After, about two couples falling in and out of love, to Space Triplex. But with a cast of four, two directors and the need for a bigger stage, the costs have doubled to £15,703.30p, with over £5,500 of that accounted for by accommodation and £4,800 on the venue.

With crowdfunding this year of just £3,760, Goodfellow is going to have to find lots of money if Braverman’s “hell” budget scenario ensues. It’s why she has been working six days a week since January and cut her social life to zero to save and scrimp money. The cast will only be paid anything if the production turns a profit.

“The fringe is such a jungle. But it’s a thrilling one, and being here last year reminded me that this is what I want to do. I walked away with a real sense of achievement that I’d pulled it off.” But her ambitions are greater this year. “Last time I saw it as an opportunity to meet like-minded people; this year I hope to achieve a transfer.” Fingers crossed.

In the case of Goodfellow’s rental at the Space Triplex, the cost is paid upfront, in three instalments, which means the company then retains all of the box office takings. Bigger venues work on a box-office split, generally with 40% going to the venue and the company paying a minimum guarantee calculated on the venue’s share of box office revenue at the minimum attendance they anticipate the company will achieve. Generally a deposit equal to 20% of the agreed guarantee must be paid before the festival.

As Dumbshow’s Mike Bryher observes: “A good deal in Edinburgh isn’t just what you pay for your slot, but when you have to pay it.” Because let’s face it, who has upwards of £1,000 just hanging around in their bank account in April?

Other possibilities for companies hoping to get to Edinburgh, are to go to the Free fringe (which doesn’t get the same level of promoter and producer interest); secure a run at Forest fringe, the curated, artist-led free festival that offers an entirely different model; be supported by Northern Stage (now at the festival for a fourth year and taking the financial hit if the shows don’t sell); or get the upfront guarantee deposit waived.

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The last of these sometimes happens when a venue and company work well together and the former are confident that the show has significant box-office appeal. Dug Out are in that happy position this year, and even better also have a week booked at the Pleasance in London after the festival, such is the venue’s faith in their as-yet unseen Sunset Five.

The idea that venues are cynically raking it in while artists starve is a widespread one, but not necessarily true. Some venues are indeed rip-off merchants, and there is widespread grumbling about the marketing costs that companies must pay to be part of the big four venues, but the pay-off is that being at one of those venues may attract punters as between them they are responsible for such a very significant chunk of fringe sales. The Fringe Society won’t confirm figures, but some estimate that the big four account for more than 50% of tickets sold at the fringe. I’ve heard the figure put as high as 60%. But even a big organisation like the Pleasance has difficulties balancing the books.

“The Edinburgh bit of the Pleasance operation just about balances,” says the Pleasance’s Anthony Alderson. “Everything is temporary and has to be built over every year and every year the costs are higher.” And if you think when you buy a pint of beer in the Pleasance Courtyard that the profits are going to the Pleasance, think again. The University runs the bars and takes the profits in an enduring and amicable relationship. Alderson says that 90% of the money spent in Edinburgh during the festival stays in Edinburgh. The main beneficiaries are the university, landlords, cafes, bars and shops.

Fringe customers queue at the Pleasance Beyond, one of the Pleasance’s 23 performance spaces. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

The Pleasance still sells 50% of its tickets on the day, which makes it a pretty terrifying operation to run, although over the years Alderson and his team have come to recognise the patterns. There is a graph in the Pleasance office, and Alderson reckons they can predict from the very first day what will happen to the box office in week three, barring the possibility of solid rain, meaning nobody ventures out. “The ideal for us is a few drops once an hour, driving people into the shows.” He adds that while you can make some influence on the graph with marketing, in the end it’s the programme that sells or doesn’t. “Which is why we think so carefully about it.”

Alderson knows that he could programme comedy from 10am through to 3am and be certain of raking it in, but says “that would make a very dull festival”. Instead, he tries to operate on economies of scale, with the big shows in the big spaces helping to cross-subsidise the smaller 50-seat spaces that are unlikely to turn a profit.

“At the Pleasance we only have five auditoriums with over 150 seats and opening Pleasance Grand was a game-changer. We could put a big commercial show in there that would then support lots of smaller spaces. It’s the multiplex idea. It’s difficult to make every individual space work financially, but the collection of spaces together can work both artistically and financially.”

Making it work artistically and financially exercises companies too. Dug Out, Goodfellow, Dumbshow and others keep coming back because they see the fringe as an opportunity and one that you have to invest in in order to get a return.

“I definitely see it as an investment,” says Guillame Pige of Theatre Re, who lost £5,000 on the well-received Little Soldiers in 2013, but thinks it was worth it for the employment (acting and teaching jobs) that came his way, and opportunities it brought for the company.

“If we hadn’t gone to the fringe with Little Soldiers we couldn’t have made Blind Man’s Song” says Pige about the show the company are bringing to the Pleasance this year. “Greenwich Theatre saw Little Soldiers and helped with the development of Blind Man’s Song and supported us through the ACE application. The London International Mime festival saw Little Soldiers too and that started a conversation.

“At this stage in the company’s life, if we want to tour, we have to go to Edinburgh. We don’t have the reputation to simply pick up the phone and book a tour.” Little Soldiers played to an average of 38 people per performance, but many of them were on cheap deals. Blind Man’s Song requires 66 people per performance, paying a minimum of £10 each, to break even. Pige thinks they can do it because every time the company has gone to Edinburgh their audience numbers have doubled, perhaps because Theatre Re’s name has becomes more familiar to audiences.

Sh!t Theatre’s trajectory on the fringe is pretty typical. A collaboration between Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole, the company first went to Edinburgh in 2010, when they played the Laughing Horse Free fringe in a pub on Leith Walk, programmed between a South African clairvoyant and a Japanese Gypsy funk band. They reckon it cost them £400 (one thing budgets seldom allow for is losing income from your day job for a month and continuing to pay rent on a flat elsewhere) and they kept costs down by being two of the nine people who slept for the duration on the floor of Biscuit’s brother’s Edinburgh flat.

In 2013, the Sh!ts decided to come to the fringe quite late, after receiving support from the now defunct Escalator East to Edinburgh initiative, which helped companies based in the eastern counties both financially and through marketing and press support to go to the festival. Funding of £1,600 secured the company 17 performances in a Gryphon venue in the area of Edinburgh known as the “pubic triangle” because of its large number of strip clubs. Despite having an enforced four-day break in the middle because a 40-piece US choir had prebooked to perform a Christmas show in August at the venue, they came away breaking even and with a Total Theatre Emerging Theatre award , which opened doors and helped them secure an Arts Council grant.

Being at Summerhall last year with Guinea Pigs on Trial (playing alternate dates to keep costs down), led to reviews, a raised profile, won them the Arches Brick award and a Total Theatre award and a £5,500 commission from Harlow Playhouse to make a new show. This year they are back at Summerhall with Women’s Hour, again playing alternate dates. But with East to Escalator now discontinued, they are covering all their own costs, unsure if they will be able to afford to come next year, despite the momentum behind them. Whatever they decide it won’t be easy.

“You have to weigh it up what we might lose by not coming,” says Mothersole. “Going to Edinburgh is painful financially but it’s not all about money.”